The Last Captain

[Greg]

I fell asleep last night thinking I would try one more film festival before I released the film on Vimeo for sale.

I've entered the majority of films through an outfit called Withoutabox which is a film festival aggregator and a one stop spot to enter film festivals. At this point, I figured all of my entries had been declined. But just to make sure and see who else had rejected me, I went to the submissions folder.

As I scrolled down, I noticed that one festival had 'Accepted' next to it's name. That's unusual. I've never seen that before. It's either 'In Consideration' or 'Not Selected'

I admit it. I flipped out. We were going to screen The Last Captain at a real honest to goodness film festival. It was like affirmation. It was cool. I put up posts to celebrate. I sent emails to Mark Headley and HK. I DM'ed the Queen. A million questions rushed through my mind. First and foremost who do I send the film to? The Submission section on Withoutabox was a little scant on details.

I went to the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Website. They had posters for all the films they were screening. I immediately noticed that the poster for The Last Captain was not among them. I felt that small flutter of fear in midsection that something bad was going to happen.

I found the email address for the MDFF and sent then an email asking them what I needed to do now. I then went back to Withoutabox and found the director of the festival's email address. I sent him a letter, too.

I noticed on Withoutabox that then had changed my status to accepted back on May 10. A quick bit of math showed that was almost 24 days ago. I was in Salt Lake City. But I was still checking my email every day. 

Crap. The fear flutter grew in leaps and bounds.

I immediately checked my email to see if I had gotten any email from the MDFF and had accidentally tossed it out thinking it was a rejection letter. There was no sign of any communication on my hard drive from the MDFF. I checked my laptop to see if maybe I had answered it there. No sign of it there.

Today is also the day that I have to take Maeve to get her drains removed. I headed off to the Vets while I wondered what I was going to do.

While I was sitting in the vets, I got an email from the Program Director of the MDFF. Since they had not heard from me, they had selected another film. There was nothing he could do for me at this time. No film festival for me.

I emailed him back begging to see if there was something I could do to get back in the festival. He did not respond. I checked the time in Melbourne. It's 3am. I figure he had gone to bed. I hope to hear back from him later in the day (Hold that thought)

Depression has set in at this point. I feel terrible at this point. I'm also a little angry that the only notice I got was a status change on my submission page. You would think they would have sent me an email or something. And maybe a follow up when I didn't respond. That should be standard operating procedure, right? Right?

I just checked the submission page over in Withoutabox and saw this:



It's turning into a very bad day.